IDEAS FOR GOOD held the online event “Can We ‘Aspire’ to Prosperity Without Growth? Frontlines of European Sustainability: A ChangeNOW Paris Report”

IDEAS FOR GOOD, a web media operated by our company that curates ideas for making society “even” better, hosted the online event “Can We ‘Aspire’ to Prosperity Without Growth? Frontlines of European Sustainability: A ChangeNOW Paris Report” on May 21.

Can We “Aspire” to Prosperity Without Growth? Updating Sustainability into a “System Transition”

April 2026. Paris, the venue for “ChangeNOW,” one of the world’s largest positive impact summits, was wrapped in excitement.

Of the term “green growth,” which signifies the decoupling of environmental impact from economic growth that we have believed in until now, the economist Timothée Parrique made this assertion:

“It is not a bug. It is a scam.”

*Related article: IDEAS FOR GOOD, “The root of the problem is not a bug in capitalism but its ‘specification.’ Eight words for building a new economy, as told by Timothée Parrique“

Today, many companies aim to “be sustainable without stopping growth.” However, attempts to break through the planet’s limits through efficiency and technological innovation alone have already reached their limit. A fundamental question is now being thrust forward at the frontlines of European business: could the very premise of “infinite growth” that we have pursued in fact be accelerating environmental destruction and creating distortions in society?

Not only in Europe but across the world today, there are constraints on resources caused by the war in Ukraine and the attack on Iran, along with a strong sense of crisis over energy security. What these pose is also the reality of how fragile “growth that is sustained by continuing to draw up the resources of other countries” is, and how it has become a spark for conflict and the climate crisis.

What is needed now is a “system transition” that replaces the very structure of business and of society. Legal movements that mandate “Sufficiency” within European treaties and aim for strategic autonomy by cutting off dependence on resource imports. An investment model that corrects the price of nature, treating it as critical infrastructure. And the power of imagination that moves society not through a sense of crisis, but through aspiration for the future.

“In a society that does not presuppose growth, how do we live in prosperity?”

In this report session, the Harch Europe and IDEAS FOR GOOD editorial team, who felt firsthand in Paris that the direction of the times is shifting, reported on the latest sustainability trends and, together with the audience, explored the “definition of new prosperity” that we should envision from here on. They shared the reality of how “not presupposing growth” is being grasped by European business leaders as a practical management issue.

Image via ChangeNOW | Photo by francois_durand

The question of how we live in prosperity without presupposing growth is one that concerns us all. We will continue to explore, together with our readers, what a new definition of prosperity might look like.